PlayStation 4 Sales On the Increase for Sony, Smartphones Still Falter

Hey, here’s something you probably haven’t heard before. Sony is doing pretty well for itself all thanks to the PlayStation 4. That’s the crux of the latest quarterly report from the Japanese company, but despite great console sales, there’s a department that still fails to impress, and that’s is smartphone division.

Sony’s Game & Network Services, the division that includes the PlayStation 4 and other PlayStation related services such as PS Plus, saw sales increase 12.1 per cent year on year to $2.365 billion for the first quarter of the financial year, the three months ending June 30, 2015.

The company’s total operating income increase to $160 million, which Sony attributed to PlayStation 4 hardware cost reductions as well as the aforementioned increases. In total, Sony sold 3 million PlayStation 4’s during that quarter, which you may have heard already is twice as many Xbox One’s and Xbox 360’s (combined) that Microsoft sold in the same quarter. That brings Sony’s PlayStation 4 sales to 25.3 million worldwide since launch, which is fairly impressive.

Elsewhere in the company, things aren’t so bright. Once again, you’ve probably heard this before but the company’s smartphone sales aren’t going great and the division is slowly shrinking almost falling behind Sony’s imaging division.

According to the financial report, Sony’s Mobile & Communications division, which includes the sale of smartphones, saw a decline of 16.3 percent year-over-year to $2.3 billion. Putting a dampener on Sony’s overall results.

Fortunately overall operating income increased to $794m thanks to a boost in Sony’s music division.